basically for a project we have to reduce the Co2 emissons for the UK by a certian amount..

Currently for electricity production the UK use nuclear power 17%, we want to increase this to 70%

My question is, what would the best way to go about this?

What type of reactor would be best? and how many would we need?

Money is not a factor, but time is, the deadline is 2030, we can by opyimistic with fairly new technologies aslong as we back it up.

I was thinking of using fast breed reactors as they can use converted uranium so effecetively uranium would not become a finite resource as if we used FBR we would have enough for 3000 years, but im not sure if this is feasible?

Running out of Fossil fuels something needs to be before then tho! and if wea are to meet our 2050 target of 80% carbon emissoion cuts! Nuclear is the only way, so i think the government will have to go ahead with somw of the PWR reacters they have propsed accross the UK, think theyve recently narrowed it down to 8 sites. Especially as many of the magnox reactors have already past their limits!!

If france can acheive 75% of its power from nuclear, and have no issues, no reason we shouldnt!

But yes i agree the safety issue is not a pleasent idea, but the proliferaton of uranium is just silly and also ,For a given amount of energy produced, coal ash is actually*more radioactive*than nuclear waste

And as for believing climate change is a load of rubbish......Im afraid it is. Its arguable wether its anthropogenic or natural, but you can not deny that the climate is not changing. Its fact, Im in no way a eco-basher, but climate change is happening and it will have increasing effects.
Sad fact is, nuclear energy is the 'cleanest' out there. With least CO2 emmisions

On this occasion I'd actually respectfully disagree with Kage regarding Nuclear fission - no it's not the be all and end all of power, but I do think that public outcry has prevented a lot of such plants being created in the UK that could actually solve a number of problems. Why?

- Power stations that rely on fission would inevitably help fund and drive further Nuclear R&D, if we had more of these stations then I honestly think scientists would've cracked fusion by now. The problem is the R&D budget is comparatively limited which is making the wait longer and longer.
- Any software that's used to run a nuclear power station here in the UK has to be mathematically proven to be correct. I don't mean just looked over by a competent programmer, I mean it has to be *proven* that the software will never fail in a way that would cause a massive explosion. The safety regimes and margins are also a lot more strict than in other countries, I don't think there's a single disaster that would've occurred in a nuclear power station if it'd gone by UK health and safety laws.
- Any nuclear waste can be put in thick lead containers that effectively eliminate radiation, and then buried deep underground. This is actually much less harmless than most people think, it has minimal disturbance on wildlife and humans and allows the uranium to safely break down.
- The north of the french coast is littered with nuclear power stations. So even if we don't build any, we're still under just as much risk because if one of them blew up, the entire south of the UK would likely be affected!

I do think that while we should be careful with nuclear power, it definitely shouldn't have been ruled out, and quite frankly I'm a bit annoyed at the government for not educating people more and let public outcry (often with little scientific backing) win out. I genuinely think we'd be a lot better off in many ways if we did use nuclear energy to generate power.

Of course, when we get fusion sorted (I think they've already got a plant that breaks even which is quite something) then all these problems will disappear and that should be the way forward without a doubt... as long as green peace don't try and claim we can get just as much power from a couple of windmills off the coast of south kent that is...

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Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs.

Take a look at the French system for nuclear power plants. They have a way to refine the waste from the uranium to reuse it which allows them to produce less waste and get more for their money as it were.

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"as a fanboy i refuse to admit it and will pull countless things out of my butt to disprove it"